April 13, 2013

Hamilton On Pole For Mercedes After Just Three Races.

Michael Schumacher is probably drowning his sorrows beating up on kids with his kart after watching Lewis put Mercedes on pole in just his third race with the team.

Jenson Button must be wondering why Mclaren decided to follow Ferrari's lead with the new front suspension and maybe wishing he had not said some things about Hamilton's choice to leave the team.

Webber is certainly wondering why things always seem to happen to him. This time, despite what you may read elsewhere, it was actually a banal human error (...or was it? conspiracy theorists go at it!). He will start at the back but tonight Red Bull mechanics will be

very busy essentially rebuilding the car, starting with the fuel pump which is garbage once it runs dry. It's possible RBR will reconfigure Webber's car and take the penalty free opportunity to change the gearbox.

You get the sense there was something odd going on at Red Bull, Certainly Vettel giving up in Q3 is not a "Plan A" strategy but rather one to cover some issue. Even his last lap where he apparently lost his brakes and ended up possibly flat spotting a precious set of Pirelli primes was quite strange.

Speaking of tires, you have to wonder if Pirelli is finally realizing there's a problem. Granted, the Italian company was given a brief to produce tires that, in a sense, fail by design but this is getting silly.
The option tires and expected to last between 4 and 10 laps and resulted in all the teams staying in the garages to then just do one flying lap on them in qualifying, I'm not sure that's the kind of "show" anyone had in mind. On the other hand, Lewis, Fernando and Kimi at the front should make for an very interesting first couple of corners tomorrow.

Of note, Ricciardo's performance taking the Toro Rosso to P7 and keep your eye in the future on Bianchi who almost managed to get a Marussia into Q2 which would have been almost like getting on pole!